Until recently, it has been the general practice in the construction of buses and other transit vehicles, to build them piece-by-piece, wherein a skeleton framework usually referred to as a "bird-cage," is erected on a vehicle floor structure, after which the vehicle side walls and roof are completed, and then the interior of the vehicle is finished by workers therein, passing the necessary material, such as liners, doors, windows, fixtures, seats, paints, carpeting, etc., in through the door and window openings of the vehicle.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,827,137 to T. C. Schubach, discloses and claims a method of manufacturing a transit vehicle by completing, in individual jigs, sub-assemblies of a transit vehicle, including a floor assembly, side wall assemblies, a roof assembly, and a front end assembly, and then assembling these completed sub-assemblies to provide a substantially completed vehicle.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,033,033 to G. R. Heffner, a bus manufacturing mechanism and method is described which provides a trackway on each of selected ones of the sub-assemblies, and employing a traveling collector, having a plurality of conveyor ways therein, with each of which is a track-way of one of the selected sub-assemblies is adapted to be aligned. The conveyor ways are so located and adjusted that the selected sub-assemblies are conveyed there along from their respective jigs into the collector, and into positions of final assembly with each other, where they are secured.
The present invention is based on the general concepts of the two patents described above, but goes beyond them in providing a bus suspension mating fixture assembly into which the body shell of the transit vehicle is carried along overhead support rails prior to its being lowered onto the properly positioned front and rear bus suspension assemblies.